Get to the bottom of the problems bedevilling low-flying Kenya Airways

What is happening to our national flag bearer, Kenya Airways, the pride of Africa? Something is definitely wrong, and we members of the public are not being told anything. Some of us are even shareholders even if we have never received any dividend since we bought our shares more than ten years ago! But what is really happening? Rumours are flying everywhere.

Some say that some fat cats bought planes and leased them to our flag bearer. Well, there may not be anything wrong with that if the price is right. I mean if it makes more economic sense for KQ to lease planes rather than buy them outright. After all what we want is for our airline to make profits and give us good services.

But that apparently is not what is happening. Rumour has it that the prices at which the planes were leased were obviously not in our national interest, nor the corporate interest of KQ. Some people “ate” somewhere, so the rumour mill says. Evidence?

Pilots are not happy. They feel they do the work and get very little in return compared to the fat cats in management and administration who, in league with some business tycoons, are doing roaring business with the airline to line their own pockets. So pilots have decided to withhold their labour strategically when they are on duty to teach these fellow’s some lesson. Evidence?

Kenya Airways has become notorious for being late and cancelling scheduled flights on different routes for what passengers feel are avoidable or flimsy acts of omission. Just the other day we were checked in to fly from Entebbe to Nairobi at 10 pm.

Just before 11pm, one hour after the flight was supposed to have left, we were told that we could not fly to Nairobi for two reasons. First, the flight had landed with a technical hitch which had not been rectified.

Second, were we to take off at 11 pm we could not land in Nairobi after midnight because the runway at JKIA is currently under repair: no flight can land or take off between midnight and six in the morning.

Obviously if it were true that there was a technical hitch that had not been dealt with then the issue of even considering taking off at 11 pm could not even arise!

This lack of precise reasoning and information made passengers rather worried regarding what exactly was ailing our flight that evening. There appeared to us that there was a much more serious underlying problem with our national flag bearer. Evidence?

One of the passengers who had arrived in Entebbe from Accra via Nairobi told us that earlier the previous week they had experienced exactly the same sequence of events with KQ. What surprised her is why KQ can afford to cancel flights and put up passengers in hotels at costs it should try to avoid if profit margins are important in its own books of account. Another lady told us that the flight from Nairobi the previous day had been delayed for about seven hours, making it impossible for her to attend her meetings in Kampala in time. Now she was again in a situation where she was going to arrive in Nairobi almost another day later, making it extremely difficult to keep her appointments with her international partners.

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is currently under expansion. This is great. Indeed it gives positive signs that what was initiated in Vision 2030 during the NARC government has been pursued by subsequent governments in the interest of the nation and the people of Kenya. A whole new terminal is now dedicated to Kenya Airways and its Sky Alliance partners. This definitely is not the time for KQ to begin performing poorly; it defeats all logic. But then we have to remember that primitive accumulation knows no logic except the ravenous desire to accumulate at breakneck speed no matter who suffers, even when the bigger picture of building a prosperous national economy pushing us towards a second world status is compromised.

The people of Kenya deserve an explanation to what is happening to Kenya Airways. Short of meeting this humble request the factory of rumours and half truths will find ready and eager clients. And sometimes rumours are not that bad; they quite often approximate the truth if only remotely. But we do not want to go that way since we need constructive and honest solution to what is obviously a major problem.

At the same time we cannot forget that bureaucracies have a way of making its officials bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich even when the edifice in which they work is just about to fall to pieces. Let our national flag carrier not fall to pieces as we watch. Some who want to pick up the pieces and build their private corporations may want this. Let them however know the truth: Kenyans don’t want to travel that direction with them.

We have been there before when the East African Community was breaking down in 1978. At that point in time some high and mighty argued that Kenya was much better off going it alone. Since we were in a one party system few voices were heard to the contrary, and we lost the Community. It took close to 20 years to realise that what we had lost was precious, and we needed to work backwards and rebuild the Community. But the momentum had been lost.

Too many vested interests in the narrow national agendas had sprang up, winding their ways into national bureaucracies and putting road blocks on the way to realising several East African Community initiatives.

That history is clear and much has been achieved under difficult circumstances. Let no individual agenda subvert the growth of our airline in like manner.